May 6th, 2012, Dragon Apples' Grove, Before Dawn.
Nightfall draped the Dragon Apples' Grove in a shroud of ink-black shadows. The only light came from the faint bioluminescent shimmer of the colossal fruits hanging from ancient boughs like hanged lanterns. The trees, centuries old, their roots sunk deep into the mountain's heart, creaked in the windless air, a sound like old bones shifting in their graves.
The air reeked of scorched bark and the iron tang of blood. The aftermath of Heracles' rampage was etched into the earth like scars on flesh: craters still smoking, their edges glowing faintly with residual heat; trees splintered to toothpicks, their ancient wood reduced to kindling; the grove's once-lush undergrowthbnow reduced to ash that drifted through the air like grey snow.
At the epicenter of the carnage, Ophis huddled.
The Infinite Dragon God had been reduced to a small, trembling figure curled against the roots of a fallen tree. Her human form, which she had worn for centuries as a convenience, now felt like a cage. Her small frame shook with each choked sob, tears carving glistening trails through the grime on her cheeks.
She had lost everything. Her infinity. Her home. Her guardian.
Horus.
She had not known Personas could die. She had not known anything could die, not truly—not until Nyarlathotep had stripped her of her power and shown her the meaning of finitude. Now she understood.
Her hands clutched at her arms, nails digging deep enough to draw blood. Blood she could not afford to lose, did not have the strength to regenerate. But the pain was grounding. The pain reminded her that she was still alive, even though she was not sure she wanted to be.
{VANISHING DRAGON BALANCE BREAKER!}
The announcement tore through the grove like a thunderclap, and light erupted from the darkness.
Vali descended like a comet, his Scale Mail glowing ethereal white against the gloom, a specter of authority forged by the Sacred Gear and the bloodline that had birthed him. The armor's bright wings pulsed in time with Albion's disbelief, each beat sending ripples of light across the battlefield.
'The Infinite Dragon... reduced to this?' The White Dragon's voice trembled with the kind of horror that comes from witnessing something sacred desecrated. 'This... this is sacrilege. An affront to everything she was. Everything she is.'
Heracles pivoted, his hulking form blotting out what little light remained. Greek pauldrons—dented, scorched, streaked with the blood of the weaker dragons he had butchered—glinted in Vali's glow. His face split into a snarl that showed yellowed teeth.
"Vali Lucifer!?" His laugh was a rockslide, ugly and grating, the sound of stones grinding together. "Come to lick your boss's wounds? Or die trying?"
Vali's gaze flicked to Ophis before locking onto Heracles. The absence of his team prickled at his instincts. 'Where are they? Arthur? Le Fay? Bikou? Kuroka?' But he smothered the doubt, crushed it beneath the weight of necessity.
"Honor's a luxury for those who deserve it," Vali said, his voice colder than the void between stars, colder than the Dimensional Gap itself. "Cao Cao lost that right the moment he preyed on weakness."
Heracles' grin died. "Weakness? This thing doomed worlds! She's dangerous! A threat to be eliminated!"
Vali moved.
There was no warning. One moment he was statuesque, a marble statue carved by a master sculptor; the next, his fist buried itself in Heracles' gut with the force of a supernova.
The air cracked, a shockwave ripping through the grove—splintering more trees, sending ash and debris flying. Heracles folded, his eyes bulging, blood and spittle spraying from his lips as he crumpled to the ground.
Albion did not even announce the Divide. There was no need.
"Weakness," Vali repeated, looming over Heracles' crumpled form, his voice flat and final as a closing tomb, "is attacking those who cannot fight back. You chose the wrong dragon to hunt."
***
Away from where Vali and Heracles clashed, the Grove was a cacophony of snarls and shrieks, the night air thick with the stench of charred flesh.
The Anti-Monsters spawned by Annihilation Maker had no fear, no mercy, no off-switch. They simply killed, and they were very, very good at it.
Le Fay stumbled back, her boots sinking into mud churned by clawed feet and dragon talons, as a hulking creature lunged at her. A grotesque fusion of serrated bone and molten sinew, its multiple eyes gleaming with mindless hunger.
She thrust her palms forward, a Norse magic circle flaring into existence, its crimson and blue runes burning with borrowed power.
"Vanagandr!" she chanted.
The spell detonated in a burst of searing light, reducing the monster to smoldering slag, its remains splattering across the mud. Le Fay gasped, her arms trembling from the backlash, but she did not lower her hands.
Arthur pivoted beside her, Caliburn's blade a silver arc in the gloom. The Strongest Holy Sword sang as it cleaved through a scorpion-like abomination, its chitinous tail still twitching as it collapsed into two smoldering halves.
"Annihilation Maker's filth," Arthur growled, his breath ragged, his usually immaculate hair plastered to his forehead with sweat. "Who is its current holder? A member of the Hero Faction, correct? But why are they here? Why now?"
Le Fay's gaze darted to the horizon, where Vali's ivory Scale Mail gleamed like a fallen star amidst the chaos, his light cutting through the darkness like a blade. "There! Mr. Vali's—"
"And we are here," Arthur interrupted, parrying a swipe from a clawed beast with too many eyes, its talons screeching against Caliburn's edge. "Where are the others? Bikou? Yuki? Kuroka?"
"You think I have a tracking spell active!? Because I do not, and if I had it, we would not be in this chaos!" Le Fay snapped, sidestepping a pounce from a wolf-like creature with jaws unhinged like a bear trap. Her next spell tore through its ribcage, splattering black ichor across her uniform.
"Gross," she whined, grimacing at the stain.
Arthur decapitated a serpentine monster, its fanged mouth still hissing as it tumbled to the ground. "If Yuki is unconscious, he is defenseless. We need to find him first."
"And Mr. Vali can handle himself, right?" Le Fay retorted, though her voice wavered as another Anti-Monster slithered from the shadows—a tentacled horror with a dozen screaming mouths, each one crying out in a different voice, a different agony. "But do you have any idea where we should go, brother? This grove is a labyrinth now!"
They fought in tandem, perfectly coordinated, a tempest of blade and sorcery. Arthur carved a path through the horde, Caliburn's edge singing as it severed limbs and strange shapes of flesh, each strike economical, lethal.
Le Fay's spells erupted in geysers of fire and lightning, each incantation punctuated by her labored breaths, her voice cracking with strain.
The grove itself seemed to rebel against the desecration. The precious Dragon Apples trembled on their branches, their bioluminescent glow flickering as if mourning the slaughter.
Yet they seemed to root for their unexpected saviors, their light brightening whenever Arthur or Le Fay struck down a monster.
A winged abomination dove from above, talons aimed for Arthur's throat. Le Fay intercepted with a barrier, the impact rattling her bones, sending shockwaves through her arms.
"Arthur! Left flank!" she shouted.
The older Pendragon sibling whirled, gutting a spider-like monstrosity mid-leap, its legs twitching as it crashed to the ground.
"This way!" He nodded toward a denser thicket, where the fog of Dimension Lost curled like living smoke, thick and impenetrable. "We are not getting anywhere if we keep fighting. We cannot beat Annihilation Maker in endurance, unfortunately."
Le Fay hesitated, glancing back at Vali's distant glow. Her heart ached to run toward him, to help, to matter. But Arthur was right. They were outnumbered, outmatched, and bleeding stamina they could not afford to lose.
"Alright..." she conceded, her voice small. "Let us just hope the others are fine."
Arthur smirked, bloody and grim, the expression of a warrior who had seen too much and survived anyway. "Yes. Hope."
They plunged deeper into the grove, the Anti-Monsters' cries fading behind them, swallowed by the fog and the darkness.
***
The air shrieked as Bikou plummeted, his Kinto Cloud dissolving into golden motes beneath him, the light fading like a dying star. He hit the grove's mossy floor with a grunt, the impact rattling his teeth, sending shockwaves through his spine.
Above, the Dragon Apples swayed mockingly, their bioluminescent glow painting the carnage in hues of ghostly gold, their light casting long, dancing shadows across the destruction.
"Oh, peaches," he hissed, spitting dirt from his mouth. "So this is the Underworld's garden? Smells like a demon's compost heap..." He paused, nose wrinkling. "Wait, that is not normal. Why do I smell flames? That is not—"
He scrambled up, summoning the cloud anew, but a flash of silver split the dark.
A rapier, its blade wreathed in holy light, pierced the cloud's core. The Kinto Cloud unraveled with a pathetic pop, dropping Bikou back into the muck with a splat.
"Are we serious!?" he barked, rolling to his feet, his staff coming up in a defensive stance. "Arthur, if that is you, I will stuff that sword where—"
A laugh cut him off, crystalline, deliberate, mocking.
From the shadows stepped a feminine figure, her silhouette sharp against the grove's dying light. Another member of the Hero Faction. Jeanne. Her gakuran was crisp beneath gilded armor etched with fleurs-de-lis, the French symbols catching the bioluminescent glow and throwing it back in fractured patterns.
Light crowned her blonde hair, the strands near-white against the darkness, while her eyes, sky-blue and sharp as winter ice, pinned him like a specimen on a board.
The rapier hovered at her side, its tip glinting with unspent sanctity.
"Arthur Pendragon," she mused, tilting her head, a saint's smile on a conqueror's face. "That is a name I have not heard in a while." Her gaze raked over him, dismissive, amused.
Bikou's staff twirled lazily—a show of casualness that belied the tension in his knuckles, the whiteness of his grip.
"Human Supremacist Barbie. Cute armor. What is the occasion? What are you racist assholes of the Hero Faction doing in the Underworld? This is not your territory. This is not your fight."
Jeanne's smile did not waver. If anything, it widened, sharpened. "This is nothing of your concern, little monkey. After all..." The rapier rose, its tip pointing at his heart. "...I can finally have some fun." Her voice dropped to a purr, low and dangerous. "Disgusting yokai, prepare to be smitten by my Holy Grace. Your kind has polluted this world long enough."
Bikou cursed under his breath and raised his staff, ready to fight. Somewhere in the distance, he heard Albion's announcement of Divine Dividing's Balance Breaker, the words echoing through the grove like a war drum. A smirk tugged at his lips despite the odds.
"Disgusting yokai, huh?" He settled into his stance, feet planted, staff humming with power. "Let us see if this monkey will be such easy prey as you say."
The rapier flashed and the staff spun.
May 6th, 2012, Kuoh Town, Dawn.
Nyarlathotep strolled through Kuoh Town's lamplit streets, his guise as the unassuming "Mr. Jun" perfected down to the rhythm of his carefree whistling.
Kokabiel's reckless zeal had nearly derailed his grand design. The Fallen Angel's bloodthirsty crusade risked slaughtering too many of Makoto's Confidants, severing threads vital to the Jester's carefully woven web. A dead Confidant was useless. A broken one could be mended, guided, used. But a dead one was simply... absent.
What startled Nyarlathotep was not the mad plan itself—madness was, after all, Kokabiel's native tongue—but the Fallen Angel discovering his precious Prophecy. If that information slipped to someone like the Attendant, or worse, to Makoto himself... then his plan would become far, far more difficult to accomplish.
He admitted, with the bitterness of a connoisseur forced to drink cheap wine, that he had underestimated the people of this world.
Their ability to discern his plans, to piece together fragments of truth from scattered lies, was... troubling. Even if Kokabiel's discovery had been chance it was still a reminder that no plan survived contact with the enemy.
'But every blunder,' Nyarlathotep mused, pausing to admire a cat sleeping on a windowsill, its tail twitching in dreams of mice, 'is an opportunity reshaped.'
By allowing Kokabiel's chaos to simmer, then swooping in to "aid" Makoto in thwarting the maddened Cadre, he could reforge their yet-to-blossom bond. He could cast himself as the mysterious ally, the helpful stranger, the one who appeared when needed most.
Trust was a currency, and Nyarlathotep intended to become very, very rich.
Shalba, ever impatient, had bristled at the gambit. Why not simply obliterate the Fallen Angel and erase the risk? But Nyarlathotep saw further. Kokabiel's rampage, while perilous, was a whetstone—a chance to deepen Makoto's reliance on his guidance, to blur the lines between mentor and manipulator until the boy could no longer tell where one ended and the other began.
Sacrifices might occur, yes. The Jester thrived on duality: every loss, every crisis, tightened his grip on the Universe Arcana and the Fool's soul. A death here, a tragedy there. Investments.
For now, the streets of Kuoh remained quiet. The townsfolk moved about their business, oblivious to the thing walking among them. Nyarlathotep smiled, a flicker of teeth in the shadow of his hat.
Yet he was in Kuoh Town for a second reason. He could not risk the city where others of Makoto's Confidants lived being threatened again. The curse he had placed on Sumaru City had worked beautifully, isolating the town, containing the chaos, creating a pressure cooker of paranoia and rumor that served his purposes perfectly.
Kuoh Town would be no different.
For rumors to spread, time must pass. Whispers must travel from ear to ear, must grow and mutate and take on lives of their own. So while Nyarlathotep placed the same curse he had woven into Sumaru City's foundations, he would enjoy the simple human life.
The curse would settle, invisible and insidious. The rumors would grow, fed by fear and uncertainty.
Nyarlathotep pushed open the bakery door, the bell chiming overhead. The scent of fresh bread and coffee enveloped him, warm and welcoming.
"Good morning!" the baker called from behind the counter, a young woman with flour on her apron and a smile on her face.
"Good morning," Nyarlathotep replied, and his smile was almost kind.
Almost.